Come Sunday Morning Saga by Terry E. Hill

Author:Terry E. Hill [Hill, Terry E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Urban Books
Published: 2015-05-10T16:00:00+00:00

26

If only her life could have been as neat and tidy as her kitchen. She had arrived in Los Angeles as a young girl from the South. Her mother wanted a better life for her, so she sent her to live with relatives in California. She was smart and beautiful her entire life, but she never really knew it. Her shyness was often mistaken for conceit. Boys found the shy, attractive Southern girl captivating. Her naïveté and soft voice garnered proposals of marriage long before she turned eighteen.

At nineteen, she became secretary for Hezekiah Cleaveland. Scarlet was smart and efficient, and Hezekiah was immediately attracted to the young beauty. He pursued her from the start. She was flattered by the attention from the handsome minister, but she flatly refused his constant advances. She often cried after work, and wondered what she had done to elicit such carnal responses from the man she admired.

After a year Scarlet could resist no longer. She gave in to the pastor and began a two-month affair. Hezekiah was the first man she had ever been with. He was gentle and attentive, and never made her feel cheap. Scarlet soon learned she was pregnant. Hezekiah offered to put her up in an apartment until the baby was born. After that, he told her, she would have to put the child up for adoption.

She was devastated. Not because she was pregnant, but because the man she had fallen in love with did not share her joy. Samantha had soon learned of Scarlet’s condition and immediately fired her. Scarlet then married a man who had pursued her since she was fifteen. It wasn’t easy, but she convinced her new husband that the baby she was carrying was his.

For five years the couple lived a turbulent life filled with physical abuse and mistrust. Her new husband never believed the cute little girl named Natalie was really his.

In a violent argument he threw Scarlet and Natalie out on the street. Scarlet never loved her husband, so the divorce came as a relief, but the pain of her secret lingered. She still held it close to her chest like an unwanted family heirloom that she had been entrusted to protect.

The death of Pastor Cleaveland only served to reopen the wounds that had taken her years to heal. Her feelings for Hezekiah flooded back, as if she were nineteen again.

Over the years she never stopped hating Samantha. The woman who had treated her so cruelly. The woman she had once admired.

Scarlet rejoined New Testament after her marriage ended and soon became a trusted and valuable member of the church. Hezekiah, who never lost his deep feelings for her, eventually appointed her to the board of trustees.

She had harbored loathing for Samantha Cleaveland for years, and now that intensified. She always suspected that Samantha would want to take over the church if Hezekiah ever died, and Scarlet vowed to do all within her power to prevent it if she ever tried.

As the tea kettle on her stove simmered, the telephone rang.

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